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I don't think so. I've argued in the past that Republicans think the economy is far worse than it actually is, that real (i.e. inflation-adjusted) wages are up, etc. but I've never denied inflation was actually happening.
This isn't the sort of thing that people are likely to be "wrong" about, because their evaluation of the economy is based on metrics that impact them directly.
Lunch at Five Guys costs me $30 right now, so for me, the economy is bad. There's no argument you can present to me on this forum right now that will make my burger stop costing $30. Job numbers, real wages, exact rate of inflation and etc, are all irrelevant, because my burger still costs $30. So instead of trying to verbally convince me that the economy isn't actually that bad, why don't we instead come up with a plan of action to make my burger not cost $30 anymore? Is there anyone in November running on a platform of making burgers not cost as much? Because I'll vote for that guy.
If such a candidate existed you wouldn't vote for him anyway. At least I don't think so, because I don't think communists are well-received here.
Paul Volcker wasn't a communist, and it doesn't take communism to keep prices stable instead of wildly inflating.
But no, nobody is running on that platform, because it would require cutting off the gravy train. The Dollar Endgame is coming, eventually, and when it arrives it will be in a rush.
You didn't ask for a candidate to "keep prices stable." You asked for a candidate to actively bring the price of products down. That's a much bigger ask, and much closer to the realm of price controls.
The guy you just replied to wasn't me.
I'm not a strict market libertarian, I think that if there are reasonable interventions we can make in the economy then we should do that. I agree that direct price controls are a bad idea, but to suggest that there are no actions whatsoever that can be undertaken to reduce inflation doesn't strike me as plausible.
Fair. My fault for not checking. But to but you and @KMC , the original comment did say to actively reduce prices. If this quick source is correct the last time we had deflation was 1954. And generally speaking, deflation means the economy is in a very bad condition.
Ok, so spell this out for me. I swear this isn’t a gotcha. I don’t know anything about economics, I’m here to learn.
Deflation is bad. Ok. So do you think we should literally never have deflation? Can we at least keep prices static? Because if we can’t decrease them, and if we can’t keep them static, then that seems to imply that they would continue to unboundedly increase into the future. We would eventually get to the point where a loaf of bread is a million dollars. That doesn’t seem desirable. What am I missing here?
The econ 101 explanation, which I believe is pretty much correct, is that we always want some inflation and never want deflation. Deflation means that cash just naturally accrues value - the $100 in my hand today is worth more tomorrow if I don't spend it. So I don't spend it unless absolutely necessary. And if everyone does this, then the economy slows down, there's less growth, and everyone suffers from the fewer goods being produced and services being rendered. Inflation has the opposite effect, where currency constantly loses value; so the most value you can get out of that $100 is right now, which puts pressure on you to look for the right opportunity to trade it for a useful product or service right now.
Of course, too much inflation is well known to cause serious issues. Income tends to be sticky and laggy - most people's salaries aren't pegged to inflation, but rather get raised once every period of time, and so if inflation is very high, then most workers suffer. Which is kinda what happened the last few years. This is why the US federal reserve's dual mandate includes hitting a 2% inflation rate - it's positive, but not so positive as to cause issues, at least most people seem to think so.
So eventually, yeah, a loaf of bread will cost a million dollars. If a loaf of bread were to cost $2 today, then at 2% inflation, that'd take a little over 660 years. Much like how movie tickets cost a literal nickel like a century ago and cost $15 today. But the idea of inflation is that, when a loaf of bread costs $1,000,000, the average income will also be (1,000,000/2)*(average income today), so things will remain the same in relative terms. In practice, it doesn't work that perfectly.
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